Phranque reminded me of this thread in relation to another major moderation issue that came up this week, that I thought I would bring this thread back up. It has some good discussion points for the changes going on in the board.
> it ends being filled with conspiracy theories
Not sure what that is in reference too. Without data - I will assume you mean Google. Google currently has 5 major actions against it by European Union, the US Govt, and institutions around the world. There are 35 of 50 US States have have filed an antitrust suit against Google (3).
From that the states have found emails that allege Google collided with Facebook to rig ad pricing(1) and dodged discovery motions by cc'ing their attorneys(2) on all talk of competitors. There are easily a dozen "WOW" moments in this story that should leave webmasters with their hair on fire.
That's not a conspiracy - those are facts. Stay informed.
(1) [
marketwatch.com...]
(2) [
arstechnica.com...]
(3) [
axios.com...]
>But I can understand that all that stubborn negativity
I hate to pull out that one comment by Robzilla, but I wanted to address that fact as a few others in this thread have mentioned it.
Flat out, that is my fault. During the pandemic, because all income from my business (Pubcon) was lost - ongoing now for 2.5 years - I was forced to take on other projects that became a singular focus. I did not spend the kind of time here needed the last couple years.
So I was distracted and didn't have time to jump into this thread. (Aside, why is this in Foo? Should be in the WebmasterWorld Community forum).
>Conspiracy theories on this board have been of all ages.
In the last month I have read back almost to 2019 (1500 threads) - sans the monthly AdSense and Google changes threads - and any idea of
Conspiracy post is not accurate. If you couple of folks actually believe that, then point it out.
Now, the monthly Google threads, do attract hijinks often. This is why we took the hard decision - upsetting many users - to end those Twitter'esque chat threads going forward.
> There are only a very few members on this
> forum that do not engage in these practices,
There are a whole group of members who never come in to the Google forum or Foo forum and stick to the code and content forums. It's pretty hard to come up with a conspiracy about PHP! Unless you have some examples to show for that blanket statement?
> could very well end up like this forum...
That is name dropping/link dropping and it is called spam. And is part of the reason why you were moderated many public times.
> asking a perfectly legit question about their site
I agree, but what about the example we just had? Is that his/her site? Is it an affiliate deal? Are they an employee at that site? We can't know any of that. We let it go for the sake of this very thread and not to be seen editing a compeitor (even though it is a spam link drop)
> owner of this board actively questioning the
> intentions/capability of the Google search PR team
Lets see, about 20 updates over the last decade. Of those 20 updates, 18 of them were called here in these very forums days - if not weeks - before Google PR announced them (which they only confirmed about [best guess] 7 or 8).
When members point out changes in rankings, that are confirmed by the rank watching services, then a week later Google says, "oh btw, we updated", then damn right we need to call that out as hijinks. They beta test the update, to see what breaks and then later release it slowly into the wild. Only after nothing major breaks do they confirm and update. It's like they announce, "The train that left the station last week is now departing". It is manipulative and does not serve webmasters (Which is who we serve here).
> There is no one conspiracy, it is that nearly every conversation
> on this forum devolves into people making either outright false claims,
> claims that are based poorly researched facts, or claims
Either you have us confused with a Fox news site (aside - someone will take offense to that), or you haven't realized who you are talking with:
There are visitors here from:
- Every major country in the world (including people behind the great fire wall of China).
- We have numerous members where English is their second language.
- We have several members from Ukraine.
- Members in very competitive verticals (Sports Betting, Adult, and Pharma)
- Members that singularly play Google, Facebook, or even Pinterest and never venture out of those threads and forums.
- We have members earning 7 figures a year and can't code a single line of HTML. Others are experts at coding and are barely scratching by.
- We have members running 8 figure marketing teams (that I know of), and also mom-n-pops running sites as a side-hustle.
The point is, we are not all going to think alike, work alike, or even talk alike.
Case-in-point, someone made a very bad comparision in the forums this week that offended several core board members. We left it because we understood that socially, that was probably acceptable to them culturally, and even though our sensibilites were challenged, we could just let it go. We did, and nothing bad came of it.
Up until about 4 weeks ago, we had upwards of 100 spam signups a day resulting in (guess) 20 spam posts, reported posts, and required mod actions per day. You rarely saw any of that did you? While you have been enjoying the forums, a group of volunters have been working their ass off to keep the forums clean of all that *real* junk.
> I never have trialled the pro membership
There is no grand wizard behind the curtain. The "pro membership" is just a way to support the board (which has never made a profit).
> there was a lively discussion, but now
> you are lucky to get a few responses.
We used to do 150k referrals a day from Google. Post penquin and panda? A lucky day is now 500.
When we started, we were one of 2 social community marketing forums on the web (SearchEngineForums was the other). Today you have major sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, SnapChat, Twitch, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, and WhatsApp as competitors.
>petition that was circulating to deny Jeff Bezos
I looked for it in the archive and don't see it. I see there were quite a few posts around the "billionairs in space" threads that quickly ran hard off a cliff into politics. Sorry you didn't get notified.
> More and more people want short cuts,
When this forum started in 1996 - early 1997 (?) on my ISP, the early days were marked by:
- if you knew html - you could make a few bucks.
- if you knew any coding - mainly perl - you could make a lot of bucks.
Today, you need to know:
- Cms and software systems.
- Css, html, and even a touch of java script.
- Basic server administration.
- Marketing: including seo, social, and maybe some paid.
- If you are in retail, you need to know Local/GMB.
Point is, sharing knowledge of HTML and marketing in the early days was easy and often. There was very little of it on the web in the early days and people came her to share and exchange hard learned information from the real world.
Today, it is very different world. Basic coding and marketing knowledge is freely available on the web. There are dozens of SAS services from SemRush, Ahrefs, to even the Ninjas that can provide insights we only dreamed of 20 years ago.
20years ago, it was a mole hill of knowledge you needed to run a website, today it is an entire mountain range.
>There is basically no discussion about React or Vue or Angular
Most of those JS frameworks have authoritative sources on the web now. We can't be the one-stop shopping for all those topics.
btw: I bet the majority of those reading this thread, don't even know what React, Vue, or Angular refer too. I bet most think it refers to a pureplay cms.
>"web devs", are just "web plug-n-players"
There are a bunch of those for sure, but when Wordpress is the rule of the day, and you can find any type of plugin to do what you want...
>birdbrain
Ya, you were reported so many times we had to increase to the reported post tracker just for you. Mods finally got tired of it and after a last warning - tured off the birdbrain.
> asking a perfectly legit question about their site
It is such a thankless line to walk. Damned if we do - damned if we don't. When JoeGFX joins and asks why "Joegfx.com" loads slow, it can be frustrating to see that link gone. However, for every joegfx.com that we have to edit, there are 20 a day of "why does easyphrama.com load, by JoesRX.com". I think the record was something like 20 posts one day by spammers. (that's not counting the actually attacks that had hundreds of ddos spams). If we don't nuke joegfx.com, then easypharma.com sees it and comes a running. How can we tell, which "joesgfx" vs "joespharma" is legit?
How about this very thread, there are two clear link drops still in the middle there that we let go. Were they affiliate link drops or just advertising?
That all said, I am sure you have seen a bit of change around here recently. [
webmasterworld.com...] We are slowly turning the ship with both some policy changes and some software changes. I think you will like both. I hope those that left, those that threatened to leave and didn't, and those lurking, will consider jumping back into the forums and participating.
Lastly, we are not perfect and will make mistakes from time-to-time. We try to chart a course down the middle. We are still here after 25 years and probably will be in 25 years. We love helping webmasters! By all means, let us know any concerns in email or PM - get me at brett at webmasterworld.com [
webmasterworld.com...]
